Drug War Chronicle #642 - July 30, 2010

Congress Acts to Reduce Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity (FEATURE)

The US House of Representatives Wednesday approved a bill, SB 1789, that addresses one of the most glaring injustices of the American drug war: the 100:1 disparity in sentencing between federal crack cocaine and federal powder cocaine offenders. The bill does not eliminate the disparity, but dramatically reduces it.

A companion measure passed the Senate in March. The bill now goes to the White House for President Obama's signature, which is expected shortly. The White House supported the bill.

Under federal drug laws enacted during the height of the crack hysteria of the mid-1980s, a person caught with five grams of crack cocaine faced the same mandatory minimum five-year sentence as someone caught with 500 grams of powder cocaine. And though blacks constitute only about 30% of all crack users, they accounted for more than 80% of all federal crack cocaine prosecutions.

The bill approved by Congress reduces that 100:1 ratio to 18:1. It also removes the mandatory minimum sentence for possession of five grams or less of crack, marking the first time Congress has repealed a mandatory minimum since Richard Nixon was president, although not the first time a law involving mandatory minimums has been scaled back. To the dismay of advocates, the bill is not retroactive.

Under the bill, it will take 28 grams of crack to garner a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence and 280 grams to trigger a 10-year prison sentence. It will still take 500 grams of powder cocaine to trigger the five-year mandatory minimum. Estimates are that, once enacted, the law could affect about 3,000 cases a year, reducing sentences by an average of two years. The shorter sentences should save about $42 million in prison costs over five years.

Criminal Justice Policy Foundation head Eric Sterling has been working to reform the law for nearly two decades -- since just a few years after he helped write it as House Judiciary Committee counsel at the time. The change didn't come nearly fast enough, he said. "I'm very personally relieved," Sterling said. "My role in these tragic injustices has pained me for decades. You realize that probably hundreds of thousands of men and women went to prison for unjustly long sentences that I helped write. It's not something I've ever forgotten."

He didn't think it was going to happen. "I have become so cynical," he said. "I really doubted the leadership was going to bring it to the floor, and I doubted that the Republicans were going to support it. Even though it had passed the Senate, I didn't think the House Republicans were going to go along. But I was pleasantly surprised that people like Reps. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Dan Lundgren (R-CA) spoke in favor of it, and that the House majority leader went to the floor to speak in favor of it. My cynicism was completely unwarranted here, so I'm very relieved and satisfied."

"Members of both parties deserve enormous credit for moving beyond the politics of fear and simply doing the right thing," said Julie Stewart, founder and president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM). "For those of us who have been pushing for reform for nearly 20 years, today's vote is phenomenal. To see members of Congress come together on such a historically partisan issue like this during an election year is heartening. The 100:1 disparity was an ugly stain on the criminal justice system," Stewart continued. "Nobody will mourn its passing -- least of all, the thousands of individuals and families FAMM has worked with over the past 20 years that have been directly impacted. I am hopeful that the forces of reason and compassion that carried the day today will prevail again soon to apply the new law retroactively to help those already in prison for crack cocaine offenses," Stewart concluded.

"This is a historic day, with House Republicans and Democrats in agreement that US drug laws are too harsh and must be reformed," said Jasmine Tyler, deputy director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. "The tide is clearly turning against the failed war on drugs. I'm overjoyed that thousands of people, mostly African American, will no longer be unjustly subjected to the harsh sentencing laws enacted in the 1980s," Tyler said. "The compromise is not perfect and more needs to be done, but this is a huge step forward in reforming our country's overly harsh and wasteful drug laws."

"Well, I guess there's 80% less racism, but there's still a big problem, though," said Nora Callahan, director of the November Coalition, a drug reform group that concentrates on federal drug war prisoners. "This is a fix on the back end, but as the US Sentencing Commission noted, sentencing really begins when the police start investigating. That whole drug war system of cops and snitches and prosecutors is still in place."

"Substantively, this is not a major policy change," agreed Sterling, "But symbolically, it's very important. I wouldn't have thought this would have made it to the House floor, and I wouldn't have thought this would pass by two-thirds on a recorded vote."

"This is progress, but it's not retroactive, so all the people who worked so hard to pass this bill don't get any reward," said Callahan. "When you leave out the principle of extending justice to all, it's really tough. How do you tell people sorry, we left you out of it?"

Making the law retroactive will be the next battle, but it won't be the only one. "In concrete terms, the next step will be to try to get retroactivity," said Sterling. "The other side of it is to push the president to start commuting sentences."

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Veterans Administration Allows Medical Marijuana Use (FEATURE)

Thanks largely to years of work by a disabled Virginia US Air Force vet who uses medical marijuana, the Veterans Administration (VA) has formally clarified its policy on medical marijuana and will allow patients in its system to use it in the 14 states and the District of Columbia where it is legal. Under VA rules, veterans can be denied pain medications if they are found to be using illegal drugs, and until this policy clarification, there was no exception for medical marijuana use.

The clarification came in a July 22 directive from Dr. Robert Petzel, Undersecretary of Health for the department. "Veterans Health Administration policy does not prohibit veterans who use medical marijuana from participating in VHA substance abuse programs, pain control programs, or other clinical programs where the use of marijuana may be considered inconsistent with treatment goals," he wrote. "Although patients participating in state medical marijuana programs must not be denied VHA services, modifications may need to be made in their treatment plans. Decisions to modify treatment plans in those situations are best made by individual providers in partnership with their patients. VHA endorses a step-care model for the treatment of patients with chronic pain: any prescription(s) for chronic pain should be managed under the auspices of such programs described in VHA policy regarding Pain Management."

"This is a victory for veterans and a victory for us all," said Michael Krawitz, the vet in question and the director of Veterans for Medical Marijuana. "By creating a directive on medical marijuana, the VA ensures that throughout its vast hospital network, it will be well understood that legal medical marijuana use will not be the basis for the denial of services," he said.

"This means a lot for vets," Krawitz continued. "The vets I've been working with, especially older vets, were of the mindset that this was not possible; they felt like nobody in the system cares about them. This is a paradigm changer, but the VA is only doing the right thing."

But he was quick to add it was only a partial victory. VA doctors still cannot recommend medical marijuana because federal law doesn't recognize it, he noted.

"When states start legalizing marijuana we are put in a bit of a unique position because as a federal agency, we are beholden to federal law," Dr. Robert Jesse, the principal deputy under secretary for health in the veterans department, told the New York Times. But at the same time, Dr. Jesse said, "We didn't want patients who were legally using marijuana to be administratively denied access to pain management programs."

The directive was the end result of more than a year's worth of wrangling between Krawitz and the VA over VA policy on medical marijuana.

Krawitz had noted inconsistencies -- some VA facilities accommodated medical marijuana use, while in other cases, patients were removed from pain management programs because of their use. Chugging his way through the VA bureaucracy, Krawitz earlier this month received a letter from the VA's Dr. Petzel.

"lf a Veteran obtains and uses medical marijuana in a manner consistent with state law, testing positive for marijuana would not preclude the Veteran from receiving opioids for pain management in a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) facility," Petzel wrote. "Standard pain management agreements should draw a clear distinction between the use of illegal drugs, and legal medical marijuana. However, the discretion to prescribe, or not prescribe, opioids in conjunction with medical marijuana, should be determined on clinical grounds, and thus will remain the decision of the individual health care provider. The provider will take the use of medical marijuana into account in all prescribing decisions, just as the provider would for any other medication. This is a case-by-case decision, based upon the provider's judgment and the needs of the patient."

The July 22 directive formalized Petzel's stance. Dr. Jesse said that formalizing the rules on medical marijuana would eliminate confusion and keep patients from being caught in the contradiction between state and federal law.

"This is great for veterans in the states that have medical marijuana laws, but there are still vets in 36 states that don't have such laws who can't use it," said Mike Meno, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, which worked with Krawitz on obtaining the clarification. "This is also problematic for vets who rely exclusively on the VA for health care because VA docs can't recommend medical marijuana. This is an arm of the federal government basically affirming that medical marijuana, and that's very important, but there is still a lot of work to be done."

"The VA docs are not being treated fairly," said Krawitz. "Why would doctors in the VA not be afforded the same free speech rights as other doctors? It's because the VA general counsel is saying they cannot do that, and because it is forwarding a threat from the DEA."

Krawitz has some words of advice for other activists: Keep plugging away and never get weary. "It takes the patience of Job and a little bit of luck," he said.

In this case, patience and persistence have paid off big time for veterans fortunate enough to live in a medical marijuana state. Now, to do something for those who don't.

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"Murder City," by Border Cognoscenti Charles Bowden (BOOK REVIEW)

"Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields," by Charles Bowden (2010, Nation Books, 320 pp., $27.50 HB)

by Phillip S. Smith, Writer/Editor

Last Saturday, Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande River from El Paso, marked a grim milestone: its 6,000^th murder victim since the beginning of 2008. The discovery of 10 bodies that day pushed the beleaguered city past that marker, but the week -- still only half-done as I write these words -- held more gore. On Wednesday, two headless bodies appeared propped up against the wall of building. The heads sat atop upended ice chests in front of them. Writing on the ice chests claimed that one of the men was a carjacker and the other a kidnapper and extortionist, and that both were members of the Aztecas, a street gang that peddles dope and acts as neighborhood enforcers for the Juarez Cartel.

Gruesome photographs of the death scene ran in the Mexican press -- there is a longstanding tabloid press there that positively revels in full-color photos of murder victims, car accident fatalities, burned bodies -- but, according to Charles Bowden, it is almost a certainty that we will never hear another word about them, that we will never know why they had to die so horribly, that no one will ever be arrested for their deaths, that we will never even learn their names.

And Charles Bowden should know. He's probably forgotten more about Ciudad Juarez than most journalists writing about the city ever knew. The poet laureate of the American Southwest, Bowden has been living and writing about the border for decades, and with "Murder City" he is at the peak of his powers.

"Murder City" is beautiful and horrifying, not just for the exemplary violence it chronicles, but even more so for the portrait it paints of Juarez as a community stunned and staggering, hit hard by the vicissitudes of the global economy, the corruption of the Mexican state, and the wealth and violence generated by the trade in prohibited drugs.  It is non-fiction, but reads like a surrealist fever dream.

We learn of Miss Sinaloa, an achingly gorgeous, white-skinned beauty queen, who turns up raving mad at "the crazy place," a desert shelter for the mentally ill, the homeless, the glue- or paint-destroyed kids. Turns out she had come to the city and been invited to a weeklong, whiskey- and cocaine-fueled party at a motel where she was gang-raped for days by eight Juarez policemen. Miss Sinaloa weighs on Bowden, a witness to the city's violence and depredations, its ugly degradation. She's gone now, taken back home by her Sinaloa family, but there's always another one, he writes.

We learn of reporters killed by the military. We learn about other reporters' poor salaries and about how their real pay comes in envelopes from shadowy men, and they know it means they will not write about certain things. We learn of one reporter who inadvertently crossed the military in 2005 and had to flee to the US border for his life when the military came looking for him three years later. He sought political asylum. What he got was imprisoned for seven months until a Tucson civil rights lawyer managed to spring him.

As Bowden notes:

"It is possible to see his imprisonment as simply the normal by-product of bureaucratic blindness and indifference. But I don't think that is true. No Mexican reporter has ever been given political asylum, because if the US government honestly faced facts, it would have to admit that Mexico is not a society that respects human rights. Just as the United States would be hard-pressed, if it faced facts, to explain to its own citizens how it can justify giving the Mexican army $1.4 billion under Plan Merida, a piece of black humor that is supposed to fight the war on drugs. But then the American press is the chorus in this comedy since it continues to report that the Mexican army is in a war to the death with the drug cartels. There are two errors in these accounts. One is simple: The war in Mexico is for drugs and the enormous money to be made by supplying American habits, a torrent of cash that the army, the police, the government, and the cartels all lust for. Second, the Mexican army is a government-financed criminal organization, a fact most Mexicans learn as children."

Bowden writes about a Ciudad Juarez policewoman taken away by the military and raped for three days. Bowden writes about the military patrol sitting yards away from a drug treatment center where armed assailants shoot the place up for 15 minutes, leaving eight dead. Bowden writes about how the press describes convoys of killers as "armed commandos" dressed in uniforms and says that's code for military death squads.

Remember those two headless gentlemen in the first paragraph? This is why we will never learn anything more about them. The reporters are scared for their lives. Bowden writes about the "narco-tombs," safe houses where victims are tortured and killed, then buried on the grounds. The exhumation of the bodies takes place with great fanfare, but the forensic scientist doesn't want her name used or her face shown, and then the bodies just vanish. Poof! They are never identified, no one knows where they went, no one knows why they died, no one knows who killed them.

Bowden writes about El Sicario, the former state policeman/cartel assassin, who talks with professional pride about kidnapping, torturing, and killing hundreds of people. Now, El Sicario is afraid. The killers are after him, and he has fled his former hunting grounds. And what is even more disturbing for the reader is El Sicario's statement that he doesn't even know which cartel he was working for. In the cell-like structure in which he operated, he knew only his boss, not the boss's boss, or even who the boss's boss was. El Sicario killed for phantoms.

But what is really terrifying is that El Sicario is being chased by "a death machine with no apparent driver," a web of hidden complicities where the cartels are the military are the police are the government, nobody knows who anybody really is, and the dead become evil by virtue of having been killed.

We can blame the cartels (or, obversely, drug prohibition), we can blame street gangs, mass poverty, uprooted families migrating to the city for jobs that have now vanished, corrupt cops, corrupt governments, but the violence may now have escaped any good explanation, Bowden writes. As the Mexican state fails to suppress the violence (at least in part because it is committing a great part of it, the killings are establishing "not a new structure but rather a pattern, and this pattern functionally has no top or bottom, no center or edge, no boss or obedient servant. Think of something like the ocean, a fluid thing without king and court, boss and cartel... Violence courses through Juarez like a ceaseless wind, and we insist it is a battle between cartels, or between the state and the drug world, or between the army and the forces of darkness. But consider this possibility: Violence is now woven into the very fabric of the community, and has no single cause and no single motive and no on-off button."

Absolutely chilling stuff, and absolutely brilliant. Bowden turns prose into poetry, and he provides an understanding of Juarez and its woes that hits you at the visceral level. "Murder City" will give you nightmares, but it's worth it.

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Welcome to Our New Web Site

If you've visited our web site during the past week you've probably noticed that... it looks different. Our web site has a new look, new structure, and new functionality that we hope will enable increased readership, more ways that we and our readers can make use of the site, and more enjoyment.

The biggest change to the site is an increased prominence devoted to how we present news and other current information. Previously, our home page had a box devoted to the Drug War Chronicle newsletter in the upper left-hand corner, presenting the top three articles, and with a link to read the latest issue of the newsletter. There was also a block in the right-hand column for "Latest News" links to recent articles in the mainstream media. Most of the page was devoted to the full text of items in the Speakeasy blog. The new home page presents teasers or summaries of the Speakeasy and Chronicle articles -- mostly including pictures now -- with links to read the full text of them. The Speakeasy is in the left-most column, and the Chronicle is in the middle.

Chronicle articles now come out on the site as they are written, as soon as possible after the news hits as we can manage. This reflects an increased emphasis we are giving to daily publishing, as opposed to weekly. The Chronicle column also includes links to the Latest News items (which we now call "Wire" or "Newswire"), as well as to our "In the Trenches" activist feed and other items, allowing all of the important types of content we publish to be highlighted prominently for our readers, as the content comes out, without making people go to all different parts of the page or site to see them. (Though see below for different links on the site to get information in ways similar to the old format.)

We have a featured item section at the top of the page, currently presenting one of the latest Chronicle features, but which will often display other content instead. The new web pages make it easier to submit or "like" items on Facebook, or to send them to Twitter, Digg, Reddit or Stumbleupon. You can now comment on Newswire stories (the links first take you to a page on our own site where we summarize the article, with a comment board and link to the article). And when there is really big news, our new, more compact Breaking News bar displays across all the pages on the site, not just the home page. The site also has a far more prominent signup form for our email list -- log on to your site account and it goes away.

This is the first stage of a multi-part upgrade and expansion of the site. The near- and medium-term future includes more new functionality, some important new content sections, and some additional graphic design work. We are also still working out some bugs and issues in the new design, so if you spot anything that doesn't seem to be working right, or which could be better, please let us know.

Some links and other information you can use to help make sure you can find the content you've gotten used to here:

• In addition to the home page feed, Drug War Chronicle stories display reverse-chronologically -- in full-text -- at http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle.
• We still publish weekly issues of the Chronicle, organizing the content that was published at the main page during the prior week. There is a link to the current issue near the top of the Chronicle main page, and soon we will have a permanent URL that always displays the current issue. (This week's URL, as you've probably seen here already, is http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/642.)
• If you liked being able to read the full text of Speakeasy articles on our home page, a bunch of them one after the other without having to click from one page to the next, you can still do that, on the Speakeasy's main page, http://stopthedrugwar.org/speakeasy.
• Newswire links (formerly "Latest News"), in addition to displaying in the Chronicle's new column on the home page, also appear on their own at http://stopthedrugwar.org/wire.
• In The Trenches items, which also display in the Chronicle's new column, appear on their own at http://stopthedrugwar.org/trenches. (Note that some Trenches and Wire items only appear in those sections, not on the home page.)
• Event listings also display in the Chronicle column, but a nicer-looking calendar than we had before can be found at http://stopthedrugwar.org/events.
• All of our news content can be found aggregated together at http://stopthedrugwar.org/news.
• Last but not least, our donation form should be a lot easier to use. (The new form is mostly working now, but credit cards are temporarily offline -- hopefully for just another day or two -- while we sort out some issues with the new system. PayPal is set up in the meanwhile, which also offers a way to just use a credit card.)

Please make a generous donation to support the continued growth of StoptheDrugWar.org!

Sincerely,

David Borden, Executive Director
StoptheDrugWar.org
Washington, DC
http://stopthedrugwar.org

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Mexico Drug War Update

by Bernd Debusmann, Jr.

Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year smuggling drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed nearly 25,000 people (the Mexican attorney general put the death toll at 24,826 on earlier this month), with a death toll of nearly 8,000 in 2009 and over 6,000 so far in 2010. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of dozens of high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war:

Friday, July 23

In San Diego, Federal authorities announced criminal charges against 43 members of the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix Organization. 31 of the 43 men are in custody, 27 of them having been arrested in the United States. Among the arrested men was Jesus Quinones Marques, the director of international liaison for the Baja California attorney general's office. He is accused of attempting to plant information about murders in local newspapers in an attempt to blame rival gangs.

Saturday, July 24

In Ciudad Juarez, the murder rate passed 6,000 since January 1st, 2008. As of Saturday, there had been 235 murders in July, and 1,645 so far in 2010. In 2009, there were 2,754 and 1,623 in 2008. On Saturday, 10 people were killed in several incidents in the city. Four of the dead were killed when gunmen attacked a barbershop, and another three were killed in an attack on a house.

Sunday, July 25

Mexicans officials now claim that gunmen who committed a massacre last week in Torreon were let out of the prison at night to carry out drug-related killings. The prisoners are thought to be involved in at least three mass shootings in Torreon this year, killing a total of 35 people. Ballistics testing has also indicated that the weapons were those of prison guards, who lent them to the hit men.

In Nuevo Leon, at least 51 bodies were discovered by authorities after a three-day excavation of a mass grave. The grave site spanned a 7-acre area, and most of the dead seem to be men between 20 and 50, many of them tattooed. Similar mass graves have been found in Tamaulipas, Guerrero and Quintana Roo in recent months.

Monday, July 26

In Guerrero, six men were found dead inside a car near the town of Chilpancingo. A sign reading, "This will happen to all rapists, extortionists and kidnappers. Attentively, the New Cartel of the Sierra," was left with the bodies. Authorities are now investigating this previously unheard of organization. The car was reportedly taken from its owner after he was stopped and hijacked on a road.

In Sinaloa, two men were ambushed and killed by gunmen in Culiacan. The men -- Jose Antonio and Luis Alberto Vega Heras -- were the son and nephew of a known high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel, known as El Gaucho. Additionally, two other men were killed in the city. Killings were also reported in Morelos, Jalisco, and Chihuahua, including at least five in Ciudad Juarez.

In the Laguna region of Durango and Coahuila, four journalists went missing after being kidnapped by an unknown group. Two were cameramen from Televisa, one was a reporter for Multimedios television, and one a reporter for El Vespertino. Three were kidnapped Monday at around noon and the fourth on Monday night.

Tuesday, July 27

In Durango, eight severed heads were found left in pairs along a highway. In Puebla, three federal agents were killed by gunmen during a firefight. A relative of the Governor-Elect was assassinated in Parral, Chihuaha. In Tamaulipas, the army claimed to have captured nine Guatemalan citizens during operations against drug gangs.

Wednesday, July 28

In Ciudad Juarez, two severed heads were discovered in coolers with the bodies left nearby. Along with the bodies were left notes which read "I'm a kidnapper and extortionist. I'm an Azteca" and "I do carjackings and work for La Linea and the Aztecas." The Aztecas are a street gang affiliated with the Juarez Cartel, and La Linea is the enforcement wing of the Juarez Cartel.

Total Body Count for the Week: 236

Total Body Count for the Year: 6,671

Read the previous Mexico Drug War Update here.

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Medical Marijuana Now Legal in DC

Medical marijuana is now legal in Washington, DC, nearly 12 years after District residents voted overwhelmingly to approve it. The DC Council in May approved legislation allowing the city to permit up to eight dispensaries, but under Home Rule laws, Congress had 30 working days in which it could overrule the District. It declined to do so.

For more than a decade, the voters' decision was blocked by the Barr Amendment, authored by then Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA), which blocked the District from spending any money to implement a medical marijuana program. But after Democrats took control of both Congress and the White House in the 2008 elections, the Barr Amendment was successfully stripped from the DC appropriations bill.

"We have faced repeated attempts to re-impose the prohibition on medical marijuana in DC throughout the layover period," said Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. "Yet, it is DC's business alone to decide how to help patients who live in our city and suffer from chronic pain and incurable illnesses."

"After thwarting the will of District voters for more than a decade, Congress is no longer standing in the way of effective relief for DC residents who struggle with chronic ailments," said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. "This moment is a long overdue victory for both DC home rule and the well-being of District residents whose doctors believe medical marijuana can help ease their pain."

"DC Councilmembers and members of Congress should be commended for providing relief to cancer, HIV/AIDS and other patients who need medical marijuana," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs of the Drug Policy Alliance. "Now we need to make sure that everyone who needs the medicine gets it and that federal law enforcement doesn't undermine the process. Providing marijuana to sick patients in DC is a major step forward, but this law has some faults that will have to be fixed over time," said Piper. "By not allowing patients to grow their own medicine, the DC law leaves patients at the mercy of medical marijuana dispensaries and the US Justice Department -- who could shut down those dispensaries."

The bill allows people suffering from cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, and other chronic, debilitating ailments to use and possess marijuana with a doctor's recommendation. Patients can possess up to four ounces, but cannot grow their own, making the DC law one of the most restrictive in the country. Instead, patients will have to buy their medicine from licensed dispensaries, which either grown their own (up to 95 plants) or procure it from a licensed cultivator.

But don't expect the system to fall into place tomorrow. It is likely to be several months before the first dispensary or cultivation operation opens its doors. Mayor Adrian Fenty and the city Department of Health must now promulgate regulations for the bidding process for a dispensary or cultivation license, and once the process is completed and the permits issued, potential dispensaries will still have to undergo a zoning process in which residents could protest their locations.

Still, while it's been an awfully long time coming, the city is one step closer to actually having an operational medical marijuana program.

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House Passes National Criminal Justice Commission Act

The US House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill, HR 5143, Monday night that would create a national commission to study the US criminal justice system and make recommendations for reform. Bulging prison populations, draconian drug war policies, and racial disparities in the criminal justice system will all be on the table for the commission.

The bill was sponsored by Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA) and passed under an expedited process that assumes unanimity if no members object. None did.

The bill is a companion bill to one sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), who in his first term in the Senate has convened a series of forums on the state of the criminal justice system. The Webb bill has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee and is likely to see a Senate floor vote this fall.

"It is a sign of how quickly the tide has turned against punitive criminal justice policies that this bill passed without opposition," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. "Prisons are overflowing at great taxpayer expense, in large part because of the failed war on drugs, and members of Congress are finally saying enough is enough, we need ideas for reform."

"Today's vote shows Congress is aware that our nation's criminal justice system is in need of major repair," said Julie Stewart, director of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. "With 2.3 million people in its jails and prisons, the United States has the highest incarceration in the world. One of out of 31 Americans is under some sort of correctional supervision -- jail or prison, parole or probation. Brave though we may be, we are no longer the land of the free," continued Stewart.

"The House has spoken decisively. Now it is time for Senators to act," Piper said. "Sen. Webb's and Rep. Delahunt's bipartisan commission legislation needs to be passed quickly before the war on drugs and punitive criminal justice system bankrupt our country and destroy more lives."

"We know too much about crime and rehabilitation, and about what works and what doesn't work with regard to recidivism, to continue to mindlessly sentence minor offenders to long prison sentences and inflexible mandatory minimum penalties," said Stewart. "The moral bankruptcy of such policies is now being compounded by the fiscal bankruptcy it is visiting upon the state and federal governments. We applaud the House for taking this enormous step, and we look forward to seeing this bill through until it reaches the president's desk before the 111th Congress adjourns," Stewart concluded.

If passed by the Senate and approved by the president, the legislation will create a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the entire criminal justice system and offer concrete recommendations for reform within 18 months. Like its House counterpart, the Webb bill has strong bipartisan support. Among its 37 cosponsors are Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA), ranking minority member Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), and Judiciary Committee member Sen. Orrin Hatch (D-UT).

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This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

A sleazy federal probation officer gets indicted, a bunch more cops get arrested, and two big city East Coast dirty cops head for the slammer. Let's get to it:

In Portland, Oregon, a former federal probation officer was indicted July 21 on charges he sexually abused female offenders who were under his direct supervision and that he then obstructed a later investigation to cover up his misconduct. Mark John Walker, 51, faces an eight-count indictment, including three felony counts of deprivation of civil rights by aggravated sexual abuse, two misdemeanor counts of engaging in sexual contact, one count of making a false statement to the FBI, one count of intimidating and threatening a witness, and one count of falsifying a record to obstruct an investigation. He faces up to life in prison on the civil rights counts. Authorities said his victims were probationers with histories of sexual abuse, mental illness, and drug addiction.

In Eunice, Louisiana, a Eunice police officer was arrested July 21 along with three other people accused of doctor-shopping for pills and them selling them on the street. Officer Raymond Trahan, Jr., was allegedly caught in the act of peddling pills by narcotics officers. He is also accused of protecting the group from police. In the scheme, one suspect would go to Houston to procure pills from different doctors, then return with them to Louisiana, where the others would sell them. They got popped with $6,000 worth of Adderall, Xanax, and Soma.

In Downers Grove, Illinois, a Downers Grove police officer was arrested July 22 for conspiring with another man to stop suspected drug dealers and rip them off. Officer Randy Caudill, 34, faces two felony counts of official misconduct for allegedly using police computers to verify the license plate numbers of suspected drug dealers and offering tips to his co-conspirator about possible targets to hit. Caudill was jailed on $200,000 at last word. He faces up to five years in prison.

In Milwaukee, two Milwaukee police officers were arrested over the weekend after being snared in a federal sting. Sgt. Royce Lockett is accused of helping a supposed dealer supposedly carrying more than 500 grams of cocaine transport it after the dealer's vehicle broke down. He faces up to 40 years in prison. Officer Paul Hill is accused of helping to conceal the proceeds of an alleged drug deal and faces up to 20 years in prison.

In Philadelphia, a former Philadelphia police officer was sentenced last Friday to 15 years in federal prison for drug dealing and conspiring to rob an undercover agent posing as a drug dealer. Alhinde Weems, 34, and a five-year veteran, dealt drugs before becoming an officer and continued to do so while in uniform. He was arrested in March 2009 carrying his police-issue weapon as he went to rob the supposed drug dealer and pleaded guilty in January to drug and firearms charges. He could have gotten life in prison.

In New York City, a former NYPD officer was sentenced last Friday to 12 ½ years in federal prison for dealing multiple kilograms of cocaine and ripping off the competition. Juan Acosta had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine, extortion under color of official right, and unlawful possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime. For four years beginning in 2005, Acosta peddled coke with a civilian drug dealer, and in one incident, used an NYPD car to rob a drug dealer of several hundred thousand dollars, making it seem as if the money had been seized by law enforcement. Acosta and his buddy went down after getting snared in a sting in October 2009 and agreeing to provide protection for a 10-kilogram shipment of what was supposed to be cocaine. Acosta made the run, got paid $15,000 by a federal "cooperating witness," then went to jail.

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Rasmussen Poll Finds 43% Favor Marijuana Legalization, 42% Oppose

Americans are almost evenly divided when it comes to marijuana legalization, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released Monday. Some 43% said pot should be legalized, while 42% disagreed, and 15% were undecided. This is the first Rasmussen Reports poll to show a plurality in favor of legalization, and it marks a slow but steady tick upward in the last year and a half.

In February 2009, Rasmussen had legalization support at 40%, and in May 2009, it had support at 41%. An Angus-Reid poll released last week had support for legalization at 52%, but that is an upside outlier. Most other recent polls have agreed with Rasmussen, showing support in the forties.

While fewer than half support legalizing marijuana, almost two-thirds (65%) of respondents thought it would be legalized in the US within the next decade. That figure includes 29% who said it was very likely pot would be legalized. Only 5% thought it very likely pot would not be legalized.

The survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on July 21-22, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

Medical marijuana had much higher levels of support, with 75% in favor of medical use and only 14% saying patients should not be able to smoke pot with a doctor's recommendation. That is up from 63% in the last Rasmussen Report poll on the topic back in October.

Forty percent of respondents told Rasmussen they had smoked pot at some time in their lives, but 55% said they had not. A solid majority (61%) of those who had smoked pot supported legalization.

So did Democrats (51%), while 62% of Republicans were opposed. Independents leaned toward legalization by a margin of 48% to 35%.

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New California Poll Has Prop 19 at 52%

A majority of California voters support Proposition 19, the state's Tax and Regulate Cannabis marijuana legalization initiative, according to a poll released Tuesday by Public Policy Polling. The poll has support at 52%, with 36% opposed and 12% undecided.

The ballot measure would legalize the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana by those 21 or older, as well as allowing any adult to grow up to 25 square feet of it. It would also give counties and municipalities the local option to approve the regulated cultivation, sale, and taxation of marijuana.

The poll was an automated phone sampling of 641 people who voted in the last election. As Nate Silver of the polling analysis web site 538.com has noted, this is the sixth California legalization poll released in recent months. Automated call polls like this one have consistently shown Prop 19 winning, while human operator polls have shown in losing narrowly. Silver suggests that people are less likely to take a possibly controversial position (such as legalizing marijuana) with a human operator, thus introducing a possible downward bias in the human operator polls.

The Public Policy poll found that 62% of Democrats supported the proposition, as did 55% of independents, but only 37% of Republicans. Among ethnic groups, support was highest among African-Americans (68%), followed by whites (53%), and Hispanics (47%). Only among Asians was there more opposition to the measure (43%) than support (29%).

Levels of African-American support for the measure have been all over the map in the recent polls, and so the numbers should be viewed with a grain of caution. Blacks make up only slightly more than 6% of the electorate, and the small number of actual black people being polled means the numbers are not very reliable.

Nearly two out of five (38%) of Californians said they had used marijuana, but even among those who said they had never tried it, 44% still support Prop 19.

"Marijuana continues to be a hot button issue in California," said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling. "Voters seemed to be convinced that is about more than simply dispensing marijuana, but that such a change could have huge impacts on the state."

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This Week in History

August 2, 1937: The Marijuana Tax Act is passed by Congress, enacting marijuana prohibition at the federal level for the first time. Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry Anslinger tells the Congressmen at the hearings, "Marihuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death."

August 2, 1977: In a speech to Congress, Jimmy Carter addresses the harm done by prohibition, saying, "Penalties against a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana for personal use. The National Commission on Marijuana... concluded years ago that marijuana should be decriminalized, and I believe it is time to implement those basic recommendations."

July 29, 1995: In an interview with the editors of the Charlotte Observer, Pat Buchanan says he favors measures that would allow doctors to prescribe marijuana for relief from certain conditions. "If a doctor indicated to his patient that this was the only way to alleviate certain painful symptoms, I would defer to the doctor's judgment," he says.

August 4, 1996: In the midst of an election season that included California's medical marijuana initiative, Prop. 215, state narcotics agents, at the direction of California Attorney General Dan Lungren, raid the Cannabis Buyers' Club of San Francisco.

July 29, 1997: A large number of Los Angeles sheriff's deputies swarm into the home of author and medical marijuana patient Peter McWilliams and well-known medical marijuana activist Todd McCormick, a medical marijuana user and grower who had cancer ten times as a child and suffers from chronic pain as the result of having the vertebrae in his neck fused in childhood surgery. McCormick ultimately serves a five-year sentence, while McWilliams chokes to death on his own vomit in 2000 after being denied medical marijuana by a federal judge.

July 31, 2000: In Canada, Ontario's top court rules unanimously (3-0) that Canada's law making marijuana possession a crime is unconstitutional because it does not take into account the needs of Canadian medical marijuana patients. The judges allow the current law to remain in effect for another 12 months, to permit Parliament to rewrite it, but says that if the Canadian federal government fails to set up a medical marijuana distribution program by July 31, 2001, all marijuana laws in Canada will be struck down. The Canadian government did set up a medical marijuana program, and the law remains intact.

August 1, 2000: The first Shadow Convention convenes in Philadelphia, PA, with the drug war being one of the gathering's three main themes.

August 3, 2001: The Miami Herald reports that the CIA paid the Peruvian intelligence organization run by fallen spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos $1 million a year for 10 years to fight drug trafficking, despite evidence that Montesinos was also in business with Colombian narcotraffickers.

July 30, 2002: ABC airs John Stossel's special report, "War on Drugs, A War on Ourselves," which critically points out the futility of the government's current approach to drug control policy.

July 31, 2003: Karen P. Tandy is confirmed by unanimous consent in the US Senate as Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Tandy was serving in the Department of Justice (DOJ) as Associate Deputy Attorney General and Director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. She previously served in DOJ as Chief of Litigation in the Asset Forfeiture Office and Deputy Chief for Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, and she prosecuted drug, money laundering, and forfeiture cases as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia and in the Western District of Washington.

August 1, 2004: The Observer (UK) reports that the US blames Britain's "lack of urgency" for its failure to arrest the booming opium trade in Afghanistan, exposing a schism between the allies as the country trembles on the brink of anarchy.

August 3, 2004: Sixty percent of Detroit's residents vote in favor of Proposition M ("The Detroit Medical Marijuana Act") which amends the Detroit city criminal code so that local criminal penalties no longer apply to any individual "possessing or using marijuana under the direction... of a physician or other licensed health professional."

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